The text doesn't use this word, which refers to penalties for wearing finery. The preceding chapter described some women being fined for wearing jewelry, or other expensive adornments.
"They wore neither rings nor gold crosses, and it was easy to see that, in their ease, this did not proceed from poverty, but simply from fear of being fined. "

Here's a URL about sumptuary laws:
http://renaissance.dm.net/sumptuary/

WindowsXP won't let me make the URL clickable.

I am completely ignorant about econonmics. But I think that part of the reason for the sumptuary laws was that so much money went out of the country to buy such foreign luxuries that there was actually a chronic shortage of the coin necessary for governemental expenditures.